


In Dolor Veritas / Moments of Truth

by sylviarachel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon compliant through TEH, Canon-Typical Violence, Cutting, Drugs, M/M, Not Really A Happy Ending, POV Sherlock Holmes, Pining!Sherlock, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, TW: cutting, TW: drug use, Teenlock, UST, Unrequited Love, as far as Sherlock knows anyway, but only at the beginning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 01:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1726817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sherlock discovers things about himself, often too late: Five moments of truth.</p><p>Can be read as connected to "<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/976222">Rules of Engagement</a>" and/or "<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1111980/chapters/2238934">That's How the Light Gets In</a>" but isn't fully compliant with either. </p><p>THIS FIC HAS BOTH CUTTING AND DRUG USE RIGHT THERE ON THE PAGE. If either one triggers you, fair warning. Suicide attempts are also discussed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Dolor Veritas / Moments of Truth

**Author's Note:**

> For the purposes of this story, I have given Sherlock and John Benedict’s and Martin’s birthdates (1976 and 1971, respectively). The first half of the title is (probably bad) Latin for in pain, truth.

**1992**

_Self-harming behaviour_ , it says on his patient notes. Sherlock glares at everything and nothing. _Self-harming behaviour._

His room (private; white bedstead, white sheets, blue blanket; white walls, blue curtains, shatterproof window-glass, view of gardens he’s not allowed to visit without a minder) has been very unsubtly cleared of any potential edges, projectiles, or sharp points it might ever have contained – he’s not even allowed a comb (you can, with a little perseverance, scratch yourself quite deeply with a good-quality fine-tooth comb), and only grudgingly permitted a toothbrush. No pencils or pens (too pointy); after the first day, no paper (can be used for paper-cuts) and no books (books are made of paper, and can also, if heavy enough, be used for blunt-force trauma).

 _Definitely_ no razors. Sherlock can’t even shave if he needs to (which he doesn’t, but likes to pretend he does, because he very much likes the sensation of scraping a blade across the skin of his face and throat that could very easily, with just a flick of the wrist really, be used to draw blood – could even be fatal – and also because razor blades are, in fact, excellent for his other purposes, fine and very sharp and easily sterilized). (Because whatever Mycroft and Mummy might think, Sherlock doesn’t _actually_ want to die – he just wants not to be bored – and he particularly doesn’t want to die slowly and painfully of septicaemia.)

After four days, his hair is a matted mess – he can feel this, though he can’t see it because he’s also not allowed a mirror – that has begun to resist his habitual finger-ruffling.

They have to give him a knife and fork to eat with, because there are limits, but he’s closely supervised during meals and efficiently frisked afterwards. And, anyway, the hospital’s table knives are all oddly shaped and dull, like the ones you get on aeroplanes to poke at your horrid tasteless reheated in-flight meal, and would make an unpleasant degree of mess.

No books, no newspapers, no radio, no Walkman, no telly.

No violin.

Not because they’re afraid he’ll try to hurt himself with it (although he _could_ , he points out in the privacy of his mind; he is nothing if not inventive), but because they’re holding his instrument hostage, as a reward for good behaviour.

This tactic is idiotic. It’s absurd. It’s backwards. It’s inhumane. Cruel and unusual. Worst of all, it’s possible that it might, in fact, eventually work.

It makes Sherlock _absolutely bloody furious_.

This isn’t the first time he’s been sectioned, and he’s aware that, short of Mycroft and both their parents undergoing some sort of radical personality shift, it’s unlikely to be the last. It’s infuriating – he’s very nearly an adult, and surely ought to have the right to do as he likes with his own body – but entirely unsurprising. He knows, too, how to go about getting out: you have to convince them you’re _better_ , or at least close enough to it that they decide you’re no longer a danger to yourself or others. It’s tedious beyond belief, but: Sherlock is very, very clever and, at present, very, very motivated.

He will tell his assigned psychiatrist this, he decides. That he is very motivated. The psychiatrist is (like most people) an idiot, and so he will conclude that Sherlock means he is motivated to change his behaviour, to stop cutting, to _get better_.

He will be asked (again, tediously, pointlessly) why he does it. What attracts him to the slide of a fine blade across his skin, the sudden well of bright blood (oxidation reaction as it hits the air outside his veins) from the near-invisible incision, the _post facto_ sting? What is he unhappy about, what feelings is he sublimating into this activity? What is the rationale for the tidy, almost regimented lines of scarring on his upper arms, his thighs, his hips? Why does he continually pick fights with boys taller and heavier than himself? They all want to know what he’s getting out of this, but only because they want to channel whatever-it-is into something … _healthy_.

Sherlock, alone in his boring blue-and-white room with his increasingly frantic thoughts, curls himself tightly in the middle of the bed and scoffs.

By _healthy_ , they always, inevitably, mean _boring._

Sherlock isn’t sure yet what he’s going to do with his life, but he does have two non-negotiable criteria for his future career: first, that it not involve Mycroft, or any possibility of Mycroft; and, second, that it be _not boring_.

_Why do you do it?_

He wonders, sometimes, what would happen if he answered that question, and all the boring variations of it, with the truth. He wonders this again now, and revolves possibilities in his mind.

Suppose, the next time he was asked, _Why do you think you cut?_ – suppose instead of shrugging and looking at the wall just above the psychiatrist’s left shoulder, or inventing something about feeling the odd man out because his classmates are two years older than he is or hating his elder brother for going off to Cambridge without him or wanting just one thing in his life to be under his own absolute control – suppose he said, _Because of that one perfect moment when everything is clear and sharp-edged and shining and_ still _._

They never ask him why he breathes, or why he sleeps, or why he likes eggs Florentine even though he hates spinach. But the cutting, everyone is always asking him about that.

As though it were the most interesting thing about him. Which it isn’t. Sherlock may not be sure yet what he’s going to do with his life, but whatever it is, it will be interesting. It will be _really_ interesting. It will be something no one else has thought of before.

 

(He thought at first, when he was younger, rather less clever, and enormously less experienced in the ways of the world, that he had invented cutting, that it was his discovery, this deep calm feeling of perfect clarity of understanding that comes with the sting and the burn and the sight and smell of blood welling in tiny droplets of bright, bright red, all his racing, raging thoughts spiralling mercifully down into one: _I bleed, therefore I am._

Then in his first week at school – at Harrow, that is – while sulking his way through mandatory showers after Games, he spotted faint pink horizontal lines almost exactly like his own on the upper left arm of another first-year pupil and realized, with a flush of self-disgust, that it hadn’t been an original thought after all. The other boy – Trevor, his name turned out to be, Victor Trevor – seemed very concerned to hide his scars, which puzzled Sherlock right the way through to his first encounter with an adult who Wanted To Help. After that, it made perfect sense to begin devoting some of his own mental resources to concealment, just to short-circuit the tedium of _talking about it_ to people who cannot possibly understand and, if they were able to be honest about this sort of thing, really don’t want to. Cutting has proved to be just one of many things about Sherlock that people pretend they want to understand when really they just very much want it, and very possibly also him, to _go away._ )

Nobody, in fact, actually wants to know. They just want him to _get better_. To be _normal_. To, in short, _stop being himself_.

Sherlock has no interest in obliging them. But he’s also learned some other things in the past eight years, one of which is that most people have very little imagination. They see what they want to see, and they want to see him getting better. Well, then: that’s what they’ll see.

He could never fool Mycroft, of course. But Mycroft isn’t here.

 

They give him back his violin on the seventh day, as a reward for an extremely convincing performance in the role of Boy Who Really Wants To Get Better. Acting is hard work, and it’s harder work not to drop the act as soon as it’s served its purpose, but Sherlock makes himself carry on because he knows that any privilege they give him, they can take away again just as easily, and it will be twice as hard to get it back the next time.

To lull them further, instead of playing what he feels – spiky staccato anger, howling boredom, jerky discordant frustration – he plays Mendelssohn, and then Mozart, and finally Brahms: the Double Concerto, with the orchestra and the cello playing along in his head. After a few hours, he finds he’s genuinely feeling more at home in his skin: making music, like cutting, forces mind and body to work together and narrows his focus to something precise, achievable, _good_.

Then it transpires that the other denizens of the locked ward are not particularly fond of Brahms at one in the morning, and he has to promise the night nurse that he’ll put the violin away until after breakfast.

The rest of the night is very long and very, very dull.

 

On day ten, there’s an outbreak of drama on the locked ward when it’s discovered that someone has nicked the registrar’s keys, and thus now has (at least theoretical) access to the drugs supply. Suspicion is general at first – that is, the staff suspect the patients, and the patients suspect one another – but quickly focuses in on Lucy, who won’t even look at people except through the screen of her unflattering fringe and who’s been sectioned because she tried to kill herself by swallowing a handful of her mum’s sleeping pills.

( _Trite_ , Sherlock muttered, unimpressed, when Matthew – aside from Lucy and himself, the only patient under thirty on the locked ward at the moment – regaled him with the story on the morning after Lucy’s arrival. Matthew has been sectioned more times than Sherlock, and has a keen nose for gossip. The staff suspect they’re a bad influence on each other; Sherlock suspects that if the staff knew some of the things he and Matthew talk about, when Sherlock can be bothered at all, there’d be no escape from the locked ward from either of them. _Can’t go wrong with the classics_ , Matthew said, with a casual shrug. This is idiotic, as Lucy has ended up _here_ instead of tidily dead, and thus is living proof that in fact you _can_ go wrong. But Sherlock couldn’t be bothered to point this out – he was too busy, at the time, carefully counting the number of randomly scattered holes in the acoustical tile on the ceiling, in preparation for an attempt to work out whether the pattern is in fact random – and Matthew had already moved on to something else.)

The idea that Lucy – earnest, awkward, too shy to speak to anyone and too frightened of what her parents might say to risk causing trouble – could possibly be the enterprising drugs-seeker behind the theft is so ludicrous that when Matthew tells him she’s the prime suspect, Sherlock scoffs.

“You’re taking the piss,” he says, because Mummy and Mycroft hate it when he uses vulgar language. “Of course _Lucy_ didn’t do it. Even this lot couldn’t be that fucking stupid.”

“No, really,” says Matthew. He looks surprised, not that Lucy’s under suspicion but that Sherlock has any doubts about her guilt. “I mean, it fits, doesn’t it. Pattern of behaviour. Stands to reason.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. Can he really be the only person in this godforsaken place who’s noticed that the big medical orderly with the spots is hiding an addiction to prescription painkillers? Or that the (married) blonde nurse with the turquoise glasses is having an affair with the (also married) ginger clinical psychologist whose very expensive shoes pinch her feet?

(Once, when he was much younger and considerably less clever, Sherlock inadvertently revealed the existence of an extramarital affair. He’s much better now at reading the signs, but also much more reluctant to mention them, as if he could somehow mend the years of estrangement between his parents by enabling other people’s infidelities. He tries hard not to think about how completely irrational this is, because Sherlock is, above all things, rational. Even the “self-harm” is rational, he points out to the annoying Mycroft-voice at the back of his mind that says _Really, Sherlock…?_ Cutting is a rational, measured response to the challenges of having to live in Sherlock’s head. An _effective_ response, what’s more. It’s not his fault no one else seems able to understand this. It’s probably not altogether their fault either, he concedes: none of them have, after all, ever had to live in Sherlock’s head for even five minutes, let alone sixteen years.)

“All right then,” says Matthew – more curious than combative; Matthew isn’t here because he’s violent but because, mostly recently and not for the first time, he wandered away from his second-rate but expensive public school for no apparent reason, spent a week sleeping rough and doing nobody knew what, and then turned up again unwilling or possibly unable to explain to anyone’s satisfaction where he’d been or why. “If it wasn’t Lucy, who was it?”

Sherlock is so startled by the question – it’s the first time anyone’s ever wanted to be told what he’s concluded about a question like this, the first time he’s been _asked_ rather than told to shut up or piss off or go away or, at best, to not worry and let the grown-ups sort it out – that he actually sits there for a minute staring at Matthew with, he realizes eventually, his mouth hanging stupidly open like a stupid bloody goldfish.

“I,” he says at last, “I’m not sure yet. I have a few theories. Five,” he amends, and is astonished when Matthew looks intrigued, tilts his head and waits for Sherlock to go on.

The most obvious suspect is the orderly with the spots and the prescription drugs habit (“Joe,” Matthew supplies), but there’s also the woman down the corridor from Lucy who took an overdose of antidepressants after her son died of leukaemia (Brenda) and the middle-aged man who seems to spend most of his unscheduled time sitting in the patient common room waiting for someone to accidentally glance at him so he can shout at them (Roger) and the handsome, sarcastic airline pilot next door to Sherlock (“How do you know he’s an airline pilot?” “Well, obviously he is, haven’t you seen his left thumb?”) who’s trying unsuccessfully to stop drinking (Douglas).

“Wait, that’s only four,” Matthew says, when Sherlock finishes explaining that as a professional pilot, Douglas is undoubtedly intelligent and would need to have excellent manual dexterity and good night vision, and that he doesn’t seem at all inclined to suicide but does seem to very much like causing trouble. “You said you had five theories, and that was only four.”

And Sherlock nearly, _so_ nearly, stops himself, but in the end can’t, quite: “Or it could have been you,” he says.

It’s not his _fault_ , exactly, he tells himself later. Matthew’s room is closest to the staff lounge, and Matthew is clearly hiding something, and no one ever comes to visit him even though he (unlike Sherlock) is allowed visits from family; it’s not at all unreasonable to include him in the list.

But he’ll see Matthew’s face – shocked, sad, disappointed, _betrayed_ – in bad dreams for a long time after that.

In the end, the orderly confesses, and is dismissed.

Matthew very pointedly doesn’t speak to Sherlock again; Sherlock tells himself it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care, he’s better off on his own with his violin, until eventually – by the time he’s discharged – he more or less believes it.

 

* * *

**2004**

“Name?” says the bored-looking custody sergeant.

Sherlock concedes it, grudgingly; his fingerprints are in the system, so there’s no real point in trying on an alias. Then he has to spell it while the bovine idiot types it into his computer.

There’s a pause, which Sherlock uses to examine his surroundings. He’s not been arrested in Notting Hill before, and it’s marginally less sordid than his usual territory.

“Oh,” says the custody sergeant. “That’s who you are. Right, in you go, mate.”

 

Sherlock sits in the lockup for what’s left of the night, glumly coming down. In the morning, predictably, Mycroft turns up to bail him out.

“We must stop meeting like this,” Sherlock quips, as he climbs a bit shakily to his feet.

Mycroft shakes his head. He’s wearing his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger face, which Sherlock detests, and a perfectly tailored three-piece suit that, if Sherlock could somehow fence it, would keep him in coke and clean needles for at least a month.

“Sherlock,” he says, “what would Mummy say?”

Sherlock scowls. “She’s not going to say anything, because _you’re_ not going to tell her.”

“This is the third time since January,” Mycroft points out. “You’re living in a squalid little … _den_ in a frankly hazardous street and only just managing to keep the rent paid. You haven’t got a job or any prospect thereof, you’re living on, as far as one can tell from the state of your, for lack of a more appropriate term, flat, biscuits and tinned sardines and” (he shudders delicately) “PG Tips, your phone’s been cut off, you’ve lost another half a stone since I last saw you, and I am, to be perfectly frank, _enormously_ tired of rescuing you from this sort of predicament.”

“So don’t rescue me,” Sherlock spits at him. If only Mycroft would just hit him. A clip round the ear, a solid punch to the jaw: that would be cathartic, surely, would bring him focus and clarity instead of this endless, pointless drip-drip-drip of guilt-inducing verbiage. Sherlock tries as hard as he can, each time they perform this little fraternal dance, to provoke his brother into striking him. But Mycroft never, ever does.

Would he hit back, if Sherlock struck first? Possibly. But it’s also entirely possible – even likely – that he would just stand there nursing his bloodied lip or reddened ear or incipient black eye and looking pityingly at Sherlock, and the very thought makes Sherlock’s insides squirm.

He spends most of the journey back to his flat insulting Mycroft as creatively as he can. The only response he manages to provoke is a quiet, calm, repeated offer of private rehab.

Sherlock declines it (again), repeatedly and contemptuously, wondering how long it’s going to take for Mycroft to stop asking for consent and just kidnap him away to some terribly discreet, terribly expensive facility. Without meaning to, he voices the question aloud.

Mycroft looks, if this is possible, genuinely sad. “If I thought the process could possibly succeed without your active cooperation,” he says, “I’d have done it already.”

Sherlock has no idea what to say to this, and the rest of the journey passes in silence.

 

Two weeks later, Sherlock is flying high – not high enough to miss the signs of a sneaky sexual liaison in a dodgy corner shop in Hackney where he went to buy cigarettes, too high to refrain from pointing them out – when everything goes to hell in a really impressive way.

The combination of the lovely, lovely cocaine he injected intravenously a couple of hours ago and the sharp, focused pain of the stab wound in his chest (the knife skated across a couple of ribs before sliding between them, aimed at his heart but far too low; possibly, though, his left lung may be in the process of collapsing) is at once horrifying and beautiful. Sherlock therefore isn’t particularly grateful to the tall salt-and-pepper detective inspector from Somersetshire who interrupts his calm, clear chain of reasoning by grabbing his shoulders and shaking him.

– _Baz has been dipping into his product too much, his behaviour’s become erratic, his girlfriend’s afraid of him but even more afraid of ending the relationship, the shop owner is steadier, safer, she just wanted a friend but it’s turned into more, shouldn’t have mentioned it to Baz but it’s so obvious, how didn’t he see it, where’s he gone now, though, shit! what if he’s gone to look for her, is it my fault if he hurts her, he was royally pissed off, what if he –_

“Oi,” says the copper, too loudly, too close to Sherlock’s face. He tries to rear back but only succeeds in hitting the back of his head on the wall, why is he sitting on the floor, why is it so _cold_ in here, it’s summer, it shouldn’t be so cold— “Jesus, Habib, he’s bleeding out. Give us a towel or something and call the EMTs. Oi, mate, stay with me, eh?”

“Not your mate,” Sherlock tries to say, but the words come out oddly slurred. “You’re from Somerset, Weston-Super-Mare if I had to guess, but I never guess, you’ve got a wife but no kids, I don’t have any mates from Thomerthet,” he’s started lisping now, that’s probably not good, “I don’t have any mates at all actually, what are you shouting about, there’s a possibly homithidal idiot with a knife running about Hackney wanting revenge on his girlfriend and her lover and this is hith flat but he’s not bloody _here_ , is he, _obviouthly_ , he’s gone, where has he gone, oh! back to shop, of courthe, to have it out with—”

The detective inspector peers at him. “You’re serious,” he says. “You’re talking about Baz Marsters, yeah? This actually is his flat? Which shop, do you know the address? The owner’s name?”

Sherlock gives him the address (but not the name, which he either never knew or has deleted), in hopes that the coppers will clear off after Baz and leave him, Sherlock, in peace, but to his surprise (and no little annoyance) they don’t. The detective inspector talks loudly into his Airwave radio, and his sergeant (twentysomething, first-generation Londoner, background probably Kuwaiti, almost certainly gay but in the closet, parents don’t approve of his career choice) disappears downstairs for a bit but then comes back with two paramedics and a rolling stretcher on his heels.

There’s a lot of calm, controlled semi-chaos then, clipped elliptical medical speech from the young man and older woman with the stretcher, and before Sherlock has quite processed what’s happening to him he’s strapped down and there’s an oxygen mask over his face and someone’s doing something _incredibly painful_ to his chest.

Then he loses track of things for a bit, and when he’s alert enough to focus again he’s in the back of an ambulance.

“Your girlfriend ithn’t tired of you,” he tells the young paramedic, who’s climbed into the driving seat and started the engine, and is now flicking the switches to turn on the lights and sirens; “she’s tired of never seeing you because you’ve been picking up so many extra shifts to buy her the ridiculouth engagement ring you think she wants.”

The ambulance, now in motion, swerves; the woman paramedic bites back a curse. “Cut back your shifts,” Sherlock continues, “and get her a thmaller one. You’ll both be happier.”

The driver shakes his head and mutters something about junkies who think they’re relationship counsellors.

The woman shines a penlight in his eyes and asks him his name, the date, and who the prime minister is. He gets the date nearly right (turns out it’s gone midnight) but can’t even make an educated guess at the identity of the prime minister. He’s tempted to give Mycroft’s name; the ever-present spectre of the locked ward restrains him.

“Gladthtone,” he says at last, because he remembers vaguely that there was a PM with that name at some point. The paramedic’s eyebrows go up, up, up. Not Gladstone. “Thatcher? Churchill? I don’t _know_ , I don’t follow politics, it’th thtultifying and thtu—and idiotic, ask me about chemithtry, I know about chemithtry, or—”

“Fine,” she says, “tell me … tell me the symbol for potassium.”

“K,” Sherlock replies instantly. Easy, ridiculously easy. “Alkali metal, atomic number 19, thtandard atomic mass 39.0983, melting point 336.7 Kelvin, discovered by Thir Humphry Davy in 1807—”

“Okay, okay,” the paramedic says, fitting the irritating oxygen mask back over his mouth and nose. Sherlock struggles with it; she pats his shoulder in what is presumably meant to be a soothing manner, but her smile’s too tight, too angry. “You’re right, you do know about chemistry. You’ve also lost a lot of blood, so we need you to relax, okay? Keep as still as you can.”

It’s her hand that’s pressing against his ribcage, he realizes. Looking awkwardly down his body, he sees a thick pad of gauze bandages under her hand, red starting to soak through. He tries to take a deep breath, struggles. Something that’s beeping starts to beep faster.

“Sssh, love,” the paramedic says. “Nearly there.”

“You were married,” Sherlock tells her, tugging the mask down again, desperate for some reason to prove he hasn’t lost his wits. “But your husband died, was killed I mean, he was a paramedic too, no, a doctor, A and E, a pathient killed him, a junkie, no, it’s not me you’re tho angry with, a drug dealer? Yes, a dealer, you want to move past it but you can’t becauthe you didn’t get to thay goodbye, people like _clothure_ , thentiment, and—”

“That’ll do, love.” She fits the oxygen mask back on, gently but firmly. Her smile is tighter still, now, almost a grimace, and Sherlock hears her sigh of relief when they pull into the ambulance bay.

 

The detective inspector from Weston-Super-Mare comes to see him the next afternoon, when he’s feeling hideous, bruised and sore and nauseated from the aftereffects of anaesthetic and the beginnings of withdrawal.

He introduces himself as Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade. Sherlock snarls at him.

“We got Baz Marsters,” says DI Lestrade, standing beside Sherlock’s hospital bed with his hands behind his back. “Got him before he killed anyone, though he was giving it a bloody good go. So well done there, mate, you probably saved at least one life last night.”

Sherlock growls. Of course he’s glad nobody died as a result of his inability to keep his bloody stupid mouth shut, but now he’s going to have to find another dealer. Tedious. Annoying. Still, though, _well done_ : not a phrase he hears very often. Not an unpleasant feeling. Not at all.

He looks up at Lestrade, tries on a friendly smile, and goes to extend his hand in the approved manner.

Except, he discovers, he’s handcuffed to the bedrail.

 

It takes Lestrade, two orderlies, and a nurse with a hypodermic of midazolam to deal with the ensuing rage; Sherlock finishes the afternoon in soft restraints, considerable pain and the foulest of foul moods.

His mood is not improved when DI Lestrade, leaving his room after a supremely annoying lecture on why clever people who’ve had every advantage shouldn’t piss it all away by becoming addicted to Class A substances and putting themselves in a position to be beaten up and stabbed by scum-of-the-earth coke dealers, crosses paths with bloody Mycroft. And stops to bloody _talk_.

They introduce themselves, shake hands, retreat to the corridor. Sherlock can’t hear their low-voiced conversation, but the glass wall of his room (the better for spying on – though they presumably think of it as _observing_ – patients) gives him an excellent view of their body language. They’re agreeing about something; then they’re disagreeing, quite vehemently it appears. As pissed off as he is with Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade at the moment, Sherlock can’t help admiring him for getting right in Mycroft’s face and giving him, to all appearances, what Baz would no doubt call a right good bollocking. It’s not an experience Mycroft has often had, and one (Sherlock feels) he’s sorely in need of.

He can’t for the life of him imagine what Mycroft has found to argue about with a police inspector who buys his suits at the cheaper sort of high-street shop and his aftershave at Boots, but he’s certainly enjoying the resulting show.

God knows there’s bugger-all else to look at in this bloody place.

 

“Your friend the detective inspector,” Mycroft says, “has a proposition for you.”

Sherlock studies him, frowning, wary. He’s wearing the stuffed-badger expression that means he feels duty bound to deliver a message but strongly disapproves of its content. Well, Mycroft disapproves of a great many things to which Sherlock is attracted; most recently, in the weeks since the incident with Baz, Sherlock’s new interest in crime reportage, which has filled Mycroft’s tediously well-appointed flat with newspapers and rendered Sherlock’s browser history interestingly grisly.

“Yes?” Sherlock says.

“He wonders,” Mycroft says, “whether you feel you might have a talent for detective work.”

The way Mycroft says _detective work_ as if he’s holding it in mental pincers is highly gratifying, and leads Sherlock to give the question serious thought.

Detective work. It wouldn’t be boring; he suspects he would in fact be very good at it; and Mycroft’s tone of voice suggests it would also feature a notable lack of, well, Mycroft. Could be dangerous.

Could be _fun._

He sternly tamps down an incipient smile: show too much enthusiasm, and Mycroft will take advantage somehow.

“Possibly,” he concedes. Not with the police, though; he’s seen enough of their methods over the past decade – not to mention the hideous debacle of the Carl Powers case in his youth -- to conclude that, almost to a man (or woman), the police are idiots. His research over the two weeks since he met DI Lestrade has done nothing to disprove or even modify that conclusion.

“There’s a condition, of course,” says Mycroft smoothly.

Of course there is.

“What?”

“I assume it won’t surprise you to learn that the use of Class A controlled substances by investigating officers is frowned upon.”

“I don’t …” Sherlock tries to parse this, fails. “What? I’m not an investigating officer. I’m not joining the _police_ , Mycroft, that’s a preposterous idea.”

“The detective inspector’s proposal,” Mycroft says, “is that he will undertake to teach you what he knows about criminal investigation procedure, and will allow you access to case files and perhaps, eventually, to crime scenes, on condition that you first seek treatment for your … problem. His exact words were,” and Mycroft rearranges his face and produces a pitch-perfect imitation of Lestrade’s voice and accent, “‘Provided he gets off the coke, and whatever other shit he’s been using, and stays off it. That’s the deal.’”

There’s a silence, then, while Sherlock considers this and Mycroft considers Sherlock.

Sherlock can see that Mycroft is less than keen on the idea of criminal investigation as a career. He’s made no secret of his belief that Sherlock is wasting considerable talents that could have been put to scientifically valuable and socially responsible use in any of a large number of publicly funded or private-sector research facilities, or in any university in the country. Mycroft also disapproves – very strongly – of his little brother’s drugs habit, and of his present lifestyle _tout court_. Working with the police to solve crimes is certainly both socially responsible and, in its own way, scientifically valuable, and the offered _deal_ would require Sherlock to get clean and stay clean. So, logically, Mycroft ought to be endorsing it wholeheartedly.

Why isn’t he?

“What do you think I should do?” Sherlock asks his brother.

Mycroft blinks.

Sherlock isn’t surprised by his surprise: after all, it’s been at least a decade since he last asked Mycroft for advice or counsel, and longer than that since he last did so sincerely.

Mycroft sighs. “It might seem very foolish,” he says, “to counsel you against any course of action which offers you even the smallest chance of overcoming your addiction.”

Sherlock bristles a little at the word _addiction_ – he doesn’t like to think of himself that way – but some small part of his mind, buried deep, acknowledges that it’s probably accurate.

“However, I cannot in good conscience claim to believe either that a pursuit which must inevitably bring you into close contact with the most repugnant elements of society will be conducive to your safety and well-being, or that such a pursuit is truly worthy of your talents. Sherlock—” Mycroft’s tone is almost plaintive, now—“you have the mind of a philosopher, or a scientist – why should you choose instead to work as a _detective_?”

And Sherlock grins at him, bounces up from the Italian leather sofa, and says, “Just to piss you off, _Mike_.”

It isn’t the whole truth, not by a long chalk, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

 

* * *

**2010**

Sherlock smiles to himself, a small smile, grimly triumphant. _Green paint. Yes._

Too easy. Where have all the interesting criminals got to?

He picks up his mobile to text Lestrade and finds it’s got no signal. Or possibly the battery’s buggered; he left the phone in an X-ray room for half the day a few weeks ago, and it’s not been altogether the same since.

Fortunately the door of the lab opens just then and in comes Mike Stamford, again. There’s someone with him, talking quietly. Someone who limps, and walks with a cane.

“Mike, can I borrow your phone?” Sherlock inquires, not looking up.

“And what’s wrong with the landline?”

“I prefer to text.”

Sound of Mike patting his pockets. “Sorry. Left it in my coat.”

“Here. Use mine.”

It’s the stranger speaking, and Sherlock looks up.

Sherlock likes Stamford well enough – Stamford is easygoing and friendly without being at all demanding, and appears to consider Sherlock an interesting novelty rather than a repulsive freak – but this is the first time he’s ever been _interesting_.

Or, at any rate, interesting by association.

“Oh,” says Mike, “This is my friend John Watson.”

John Watson (five foot seven, late thirties but looks older, blond hair going silver, military haircut just starting to grow out, limp apparently forgotten now he’s standing still, psychosomatic then, fatigue lines on his face, not sleeping well, was talking to Mike about Bart’s as they came into the lab, so, doctor? _Army_ doctor, what a lovely paradox!) is holding out his phone (hand suntanned, sharp tan line at the wrist, has been somewhere sunny but not on holiday), and Sherlock takes it (expensive, email enabled, MP3 player, why would he spend money on this, no, it’s newish but not actually new, hand-me-down from ... whom?) and sends his text:

_If brother has green ladder, arrest brother. SH_

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” he asks.

The phone’s engraved on the back, _Harry Watson / from Clara / xxx_ (male relative, then, probably brother, marriage in trouble) and has got telltale little scratches where the charger plugs in (brother is a drinker).

“Afghanistan,” says John Watson. “I’m sorry, what—”

Sherlock hands the phone back.

He retreats a bit – he’s a little afraid of how interesting he finds this man, who of course, he realizes now, is Mike’s answer to this morning’s comment about Sherlock’s need for a flatmate – and says, “How do you feel about the violin?”

By the time he leaves the lab, concocting an excuse about his riding crop and the mortuary – he’s done everything he can think of to throw this John Watson off balance and has succeeded only in making himself dizzy with … what?

None of this makes any sense. How can one person be so _interesting_?

 

The whole of their acquaintance through the next forty-eight hours Sherlock is testing, pushing, trying to find the point at which John Watson will break, will give him up as a bad job, will tell him to piss off, call him a freak or a psychopath, recoil and flee.

John never does.

He’s not put off by Anderson and Donovan, or by being kidnapped and threatened and offered money to spy on Sherlock; confronted by the murdered woman’s case sitting in the middle of their (in Sherlock’s mind, it’s already _their_ ) lounge, he doesn’t for a moment consider that it might mean Sherlock’s the guilty party.

John, in short, does – and keeps on doing – what no one else has done for a very long time: things Sherlock doesn’t expect him to do.

Sherlock stops censoring himself, stops making even a token effort at abiding by other people’s social norms, just to see what will happen.

What happens is that John sits at Sherlock’s table at Angelo’s and flirts with him.

Sherlock, astonished and flustered, cuts him off, and John begins spouting denials, and Sherlock, though he has less than no idea how to conduct a genuine flirtation, still less a _relationship_ , at once wishes he’d kept his bloody mouth shut and let John steer the conversation further – but then there’s a cab idling across the street for no reason and he’s out of his chair and after it and John is following him down alleys, across rooftops, all trace of his limp vanished, and this is categorically the best and highest high of Sherlock’s life and he wants nothing more than to keep running through London with John for the rest of time.

 

“We can’t giggle, it’s a crime scene!” John insists, giggling. His shoulder bumps Sherlock’s arm.

Sherlock looks down at him. The greying, limping, world-weary old soldier of yesterday at Bart’s is gone, utterly gone, and in his place is this man, firm of stride, steady of hand, smiling guilelessly up at Sherlock with a spark of joy in his deep blue eyes.

The cabbie was right: Sherlock would do, has done, nearly anything to not be bored.

And the cabbie gave him Moriarty, whatever, or whoever, Moriarty may be.

But now the universe has given him John Watson, and the possibilities are spinning out endlessly in all directions, as limitless as the sky.

“Dinner?” Sherlock asks.

John grins up at him. “Starving.”

 

* * *

**2012**

The possibilities have narrowed, by slow and then by rapid degrees, down to this one.

Sherlock has looked at the situation from every possible angle, has run endless iterations of what-ifs, and it’s all come down to this. Moriarty has painted him into a corner, has systematically taken away all his options.

Has, in a word, won.

 

He keeps his face impassive, uncaring, as though John’s verbal daggers affect him not at all, as though it weren’t cripplingly painful to watch John march out of the lab believing this of him, believing that Mrs Hudson is dying and Sherlock doesn’t care.

He allows himself one deep breath, in and out, to cope with the hurt.

It isn’t enough. It has to be enough.

He needs John to believe the lie, he reminds himself. He needs John not to be here, to be safe somewhere else, while he does what he has to do. There’s no point to any of it if not to keep John safe.

He needs John to believe the worst of him. But what he _wants_ …

What he wants is something different altogether.

 

He hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but it has, there’s nothing for it, he’s going to have to jump. Moriarty has won this battle, won it comprehensively, and it doesn’t even matter that he’s done it from, effectively, beyond the grave.

But there’s still one chance, which is that if this next bit – the backup plan -- works as it’s meant to, Sherlock, having lost this battle, can still win the war.

(This is how far John Watson has infiltrated Sherlock’s mind: he’s thinking in military metaphors now.)

His hands shake. His voice shakes. He meant to produce some tears for the occasion, it’s true, but these tears are unexpectedly, disconcertingly real.

“Nobody could be that clever, John,” he says.

And John says, “You could.”

Their hands are stretched toward each other, as though they could touch across the chasm, when Sherlock jumps.

 

Mrs Hudson retreats, and now John is standing there alone, staring down at Sherlock’s headstone.

Even here, where he thinks no one can see him, he can’t let himself weep. _My soldier, my John. What am I going to do without you?_ He speaks to Sherlock’s grave, forcing the words out: “I was … so alone … and I owe you so much.”

He asks for a miracle, begs Sherlock not to be dead, and he sounds so broken -- broken the way Sherlock feels – that Sherlock wants nothing more than to stride out of the trees and grant him his wish. He’d be angry, of course, he’d be furious, and they’d fight and hurt each other, and then Sherlock would tell John how, tell him why, and they’d go back to Baker Street and let Mrs Hudson in on the joke—

John will be all right, Sherlock tells himself. John, unlike Sherlock, has friends, lots of them, his Army mates, his old rugby mates, Mike and Molly and Mrs Hudson and … well, all right, perhaps not Lestrade just at the moment, he’s got Harry, Sarah and his other colleagues at the surgery, and they’ll help him cope. It’s true that none of them know him as Sherlock does, understand him as Sherlock does, _appreciate_ the many facets of John Watson as Sherlock does, but they’ll look after him; they will. He’ll be all right. And Mycroft will keep an eye, out of guilt.

Sherlock watches from the trees as John touches his fingers to the polished granite (feels those fingers catching at his own, below the handcuffs), straightens his shoulders, turns smartly and marches away, taking Sherlock’s heart with him.

 

* * *

**2014**

Sherlock is grateful to Mycroft for extracting him from Serbia, of course he is, but the two of them don’t really _do_ gratitude and anyway there are more important things to think about now, the chief of which is that Sherlock is back in London, his hair’s been cut and his horrible beard shaved off and he’s got his coat back and finally, finally feels like Sherlock Holmes again, and what Sherlock Holmes needs now is 221B Baker Street, his violin, and, most importantly and most urgently, John Watson.

Mycroft keeps talking, but it would be hard to hear him even if Sherlock were really trying, which he isn’t, under the insistent drumbeat of _John, John, John_ that resonates with his pulse. He answers at random, plotting routes and backup routes to Baker Street in his mind’s eye.

There’s a small, deeply buried part of Sherlock that knows, intellectually, logically, that John hasn’t been sitting in cold storage in their flat for two years just waiting for him to come back. But the rest of him has survived the various ordeals of his time away – and particularly that last bit – only by keeping eyes on the prize: John. Baker Street. 221B. John-and-Sherlock. _Home._

So it brings him up short, the discovery that John’s not there, that he’s got a new flat, a full-time job, that he’s not just got a girlfriend but is _living_ with her, that he has, in fact, _moved on._ Or is doing a bang-up job of pretending to, at any rate. Mycroft thinks he understands Sherlock, thinks he understands _John_ , what a preposterous idea, and suddenly Sherlock realizes something that accomplishes the impossible: he feels sorry for Mycroft.

“I’m not _lonely_ , Sherlock,” Mycroft says, his tone a nicely judged blend of pity and amusement.

Sherlock looks at him sadly. “How would you know?” he asks.

 

Once again Sherlock dusts off and displays his most outrageously anti-social behaviour for John to consider and reject. He draws on a false moustache and pretends the whole thing is a hugely amusing joke; he taunts John with the remembrance of things past, mocks his (frankly awful) moustache, conspires against him with his girlfriend (fiancée?), because if John’s going to cut Sherlock out of his life for the crime of not being dead (of course he knows that’s not the real crime, he’s not an _idiot_ : _One word, Sherlock, that’s all I’d have needed_ , John is the very definition of loyalty and Sherlock, because John is also the very worst liar in the world, betrayed his trust) then Sherlock is going to go out with a bang.

John thumps him, and thumps him, and thumps him again, and Sherlock’s focus on John becomes sharper and clearer.

John’s hands laid on him in anger are still John’s hands. John shouting at him, John angry and hurting and betrayed, is John _alive_ , and what the fuck else (as John would say) has all of this been _for_? And if John’s moved on, found happiness elsewhere, shouldn’t that be enough for Sherlock?

But it isn’t, it _isn’t_ , because the thing Sherlock learned about himself, in the years since he last heard John’s voice in his ears instead of inside his own head, is that Sherlock Holmes is not in fact _right_ without John Watson. The John in his head was a workable stopgap measure, but he’s here now, and the real John is so close, and it’s just not enough anymore. _You were right all along, John_ , he wants to tell him. _Friends protect people. I was protecting you._

So when Mary (who’s lying about something, he saw that right off, but not about loving John) comes to him with her cryptic email messages, he pushes away the questions he doesn’t want to answer, questions like _How does a nice suburban nurse recognize a skip code in her spam folder_ , because John’s life is in danger and that is just. not. on.

They’re nearly too late but only nearly, and it’s Sherlock who pulls John out of the bonfire, Sherlock’s hands in their slightly singed leather gloves that frame his face and Sherlock’s voice, rough with smoke inhalation and sheer naked terror, that calls him back to consciousness.

 

The bomb on the train has got a kill switch. Yes, thank god, it’s got a kill switch. They’re not going to die. But what if they were? What would they say to each other?

Sherlock thinks he’s acting at first, just as he did when he spoke to John from the roof of Bart’s Hospital, but it takes only moments for the act to tip over into horrible raw truth. He sees John register that truth, and lo, it calls forth some truths of John’s own.

“I find it difficult,” he says, and Sherlock almost laughs at the level of understatement those words represent. “I find it difficult, this sort of thing.”

Sherlock is at his feet, penitential. John, he’s beginning to suspect, wants to forgive him, perhaps even _needs_ to forgive him, as much as he needs John’s forgiveness.

If they were really going to die, this is the moment when Sherlock would make his confession, when he would say right out loud, _I love you, John, I’ve loved you all this time and if I have one regret, aside from pretending to be dead, it’s that I didn’t tell you when I had the chance, and god knows we had a lot of chances, how much more I really wanted._

But they aren’t going to die, there’s a kill switch and he’s already found it, they’re going to walk away from this tube car, Sherlock back to Baker Street and John back to Mary, so he doesn’t. It hurts, picturing John going back to his flat with Mary instead of home, _home_ , with Sherlock, but that’s all right. If there’s anything Sherlock knows down to the ground, it’s what to do with pain.


End file.
